Palisadian Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, 67, was immortalized in her father’s (Frederick Kohner) 1957 book ‘Gidget, The Little Girl with Big Ideas.’ This semi-autobiographical account of Kohner’s summer on a Malibu beach learning to surf and of experiencing a first love has sold more than three million copies. The book was turned into a popular 1959 movie, which starred Sandra Dee and James Darren and which inspired a television show that starred Sally Field. This simple story became a cultural phenomenon because it brought surfing into the nation’s spotlight while featuring a girl in a predominantly male sport. The 1950s were a time before Title IX and women’s sports, and less than three percent of surfers were women. ‘It wasn’t something that girls did,’ Zuckerman said, who was chosen in a 1999 Surfer magazine 40th Anniversary Collector’s Issue as one of the most influential surfers of all time. She was ranked number seven of the 25 featured and one of only two women selected. On January 9, Kathy spoke at a Palisades AARP meeting about her parents, her life and surfing. ‘I always loved Malibu beach,’ she told the more than 50 people in the audience. Her Czechoslovakian parents were refugees from the Holocaust, and relocated in Brentwood. Even though her father didn’t swim, he took the family to the beach because a doctor relative had told him that it was healthy. ‘I got bored sitting on the sand,’ Kathy said. The 15-year-old wandered over to watch the surfers and her two interests blended, surfers and boys–in particular a boy named Bill Jensen, who became immortalized in the book and film as Gidget’s love interest Moondoggie. In order to be accepted by influential surfers such as Miki Dora, Mickey Mu’oz, Dewey Weber, Tom Morey, Nat Young, Terry “Tubesteak” Tracy and Jensen, Kathy decided to learn to surf. The men were amused by the 5’1′ teenager, and one of the surfers nicknamed her ‘Gidget,’ a combination of girl and midget. In 1956, Kathy went out on a surfboard for the first time. Her diary entry for the day read: ‘I didn’t do too much but go to the beach. I didn’t think I’d have fun but I met Matt [Kivlin] and he took me out on his surfboard. He let me catch the waves by myself and once I fell off and the board went flying in the air. I didn’t get hurt at all. . .I hope Matt will take me surfing again.’ She paid $30 for her first board, which was 8′ feet long and weighed 22 pounds. The teenager confided to her father that she wished she could write a story about the beach. ‘My dad said, ‘Tell me everything and I’ll write it for you.” Kohner was a screenwriter in Hollywood. In 1939, he was nominated for best writing original story in ‘Mad About Music,’ in which a young woman at a boarding school in Switzerland writes herself letters from an imaginary explorer-adventurer father. His credits include numerous stories such as ‘Bride for Sale,’ ‘The Men in Her Life,’ and ‘Three Daring Daughters’ that were made into films starring some of the greatest leading ladies of the day, including Loretta Young, Jeanette MacDonald and Rosalind Russell. His style of writing about spunky women was perfectly suited for ‘Gidget,’ and the book became a national bestseller, reaching seventh on the chart, above Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road.’ Not all reviewers applauded his work. A Nebraska reviewer called it ‘A vulgar little book about a nice little girl who tries to be hard.’ The reviewer ended by saying that he didn’t like the language and suggesting that the young woman be spanked. Whether it was his style or a truthfulness that spoke to young women, Kohner gained a large audience. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of young girls wrote my dad letters,’ Kathy said. He kept them and when he and his wife passed away in 2001, Kathy and her sister inherited the rights to Gidget as well as the letters. In 2001, Zuckerman brought out a new edition of the book, which contains beach photos of her from the 1950s, a foreword and introduction by writer/playwright Deanne Stillman. In the story ‘Surfing Sunset & Vine: Tales of Gidget and Other Short Subjects,’ documentary filmmaker Brian Gillogly became fascinated by Zuckerman. As he got to know her, the story took on several dimensions and he decided to shoot a documentary about her. ‘Surfing exploded after the ‘Gidget’ movie came out,’ he said. ‘Surfer lingo was introduced to the nation’s culture. It was interesting to watch how the icon spread from Kathy and affected the country.’ Gillogly was also fascinated by the degree to which Gidget became a liberating force for women: she was dubbed a proto-feminist because she was participating in a male sport before the feminist scene exploded around the country. ‘We have all these inspirational stories from women on the film and it’s all because of Gidget [Kohner],’ he said. The documentary was only screened once at the Malibu Film Festival in 2006, where it received a standing ovation and rave reviews. Sony Pictures allowed Gillogly to pay a film festival fee for that showing, but in order to receive licensing to continue to screen the one-hour documentary, he must pay a $50,000. ‘For a major network that would be nothing,’ Gillogly said. ‘For us that’s a deal breaker.’ He has had queries from all over the world about showing the documentary, but so far Sony has not budged. The film is being reviewed by the Stanford Fair Use Project, which helps documentaries to legally use copyrighted clips. When the ‘Gidget’ book was reissued in 2001, Zuckerman hit the road to promote it. She was featured in newspapers around the country, including the New York Times, the Boston Herald, and the Chicago Tribune. Magazine stories and television appearances followed. Zuckerman has appeared on the ‘CBS Morning Show’ and Australia’s ‘Today Show,’ as well as on National Public Radio. Zuckerman has told her story to audiences and schools around the country. She recently found out that she will be inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame on January 27. She left Malibu in 1960 to attend Oregon College. In 1965, she met her husband of 45 years, Marvin Zuckerman. The couple have two sons: David, a freelance magazine writer and independent film producer, and Phil, a sociology professor at Pitzer College. The Zuckerman’s have three grandchildren: Ruby, Flora and August. After taking a 40-year break from surfing, Kathy is in the water again. ‘It’s like a bike: once you learn it, you can do it,’ she said. Zuckerman belongs to the Surfers Club in Malibu and hits the waves once a week. She told the audience, ‘It was a good place for me to spend my youth.’ If Kathy’s trim figure and bubbly enthusiasm are any indication of the benefits of surfing, it sounds as if the Pacific Ocean is still a good place to spend time.

By MICHAEL AUSHENKER Staff Writer ‘When you sit a kid down to practice in front of a 5 ft. by 8 ft. window with a view of the Pacific Palisades,’ says local jazz pianist James Wrubel, ‘it’s a little difficult to concentrate.’ Yet despite his youthful restlessness, those childhood classical music lessons have paid off. Today, Wrubel actively performs around the Los Angeles jazz circuit. At a recent Jazz Bakery gig, Wrubel, sharply dressed in black, brings an easy rapport with his audience to the stage. About 50 people, mostly in their 20s and including a cross-section of Santa Monica College’s History of Jazz class, gather on this splendorous Sunday afternoon to take in the James Wrubel Trio’s musical stylings. The baseline in his voice carries Wrubel’s laid back, self-deprecating dry wit to the back rows of the Culver City venue, located in the heart of a converted bread factory. ‘If you’re bored, Levitz [Furniture], across the street, is having a 70 percent off sale,’ quips the young musician. With the magenta ‘Jazz Bakery’ logo projected behind him onto a blue-to-violet gradated screen, Wrubel himself projects maturity beyond his 25 years, the spotlight sharpening his carrot top good looks. Backed by fellow USC jazz messengers Christopher Hackman on upright bass and a plaid-clad Brian Carmody tossing off staccato, Glen Krupa-esque drum boogie riffs, Wrubel gamely leads his trio into a frisky cover of the late Michael Brecker’s ‘Slings and Arrows.’ Mid-gig, a solo Wrubel caroms his way through an unorthodox rendition of the classic ‘Over the Rainbow.’ The James Wrubel Trio, which also plays ‘It Could Happen To You’ and ‘Nature Boy,’ embraces all jazz subgenres–from ragtime to big band to Dixieland and hard bop. Music always came naturally to the lifelong Palisadian. Wrubel, who went to Carl Thorpe School and still resides in the Highlands, grew up as something of a prodigy. ‘My mom knew at [age] two or three because I could hum a tune,’ he says. ‘I was born premature. I was late talking but I could hum. When I was little, I could pick up things off the TV and I could play it on the piano.’ As a five year-old, Wrubel actually corrected a piano teacher who was playing the ‘Jeopardy’ theme (‘He played it in the wrong key’). Theme songs and cartoon soundtracks–the destination of many a jazz player– have no appeal to Wrubel. The thought of applying his gift commercially in this fashion makes this jazz purist shudder. ‘I’m really not interested in scoring films,’ says Wrubel, who has a sister, 28, working in the film industry. ‘It’s a great life if you can get the work.’ Wrubel remembers how his dad, who never acted on his promise despite receiving a full scholarship from Juilliard, once picked up his dormant clarinet, after many years of musical inactivity, and blew ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ for his young son. Wrubel was only 12 when his father, an aerospace engineer, died of cancer in 1993. And yet, he insists his father’s death did not alter or further his musical path. ‘It made me more introspective as a person,’ he says. Attending Crossroads was indeed a crossroads for the classically trained Wrubel, whose interest in jazz blossomed at the Santa Monica-based school. It was while attending Crossroads, Wrubel notes, that ‘my friend brought me the album ‘Kind of Blue’ by Miles Davis. Right after my dad passed away, I found out that my dad had a massive jazz collection and I popped it right in.’ Soon, Wrubel began digging the sounds of Bill Evans, Horace Silver, and Dave Brubeck. Cannonball Adderley (whose choreographer niece, Janet Adderley, runs the Adderley School on Palisades Drive) was another one of Wrubel’s jazz heroes. Back at The Bakery show, the James Wrubel Trio chugs along full-throttle. Wrubel kicks off one tune with some deliberately off-key ivory tickling. As the song builds steam toward a runaway train tempo, the rhythm section jumps aboard for the ride, pushing the pace faster and faster before the number runs out of locomotive juice, gliding slowly and smoothly towards its finale. Wrubel attributes his discipline to practicing to his longtime teacher Palisadian Nancy Arnold, who taught him from age six right through high school and continues to show support. ‘One of the things that was striking about James is that when he and his sister came to audition for me, he did not want me to leave. His mother kind of had to drag him out. To this day, I noticed, he cannot walk by a piano without playing it. It was inspirational for me to teach him.’ Wrubel has also studied with Palisades jazzman John Rangel. By the time he reached Dartmouth (class of 2004), Wrubel fell into a pocket of older musicians, many of them jazz guitarists, who became his mentor figures. ‘It was kind of informal–Eddie Palimieri, Wynton Marsalis, Stefon Harris, Cuban/Latin jazz guys Arturo O’Farrill–they would come to perform, conduct master classes, listen to you play and offer critiques.’ The irony is not lost on Wrubel, that in predominantly WASP-y New Hampshire, he got his crash course on international, multiethnic music. These days, Wrubel adds, ‘My focus has shifted to contemporary players. I like harmony, I like big chords. I play everything from salsa, Latin jazz and bossanova.’ Everything except, perhaps, the music that most people his age listen to. He’s just not interested. ‘I could, but it’s not challenging, technically and harmonically.’ Yet for all of his rejection of contemporary groups, the James Wrubel Trio often opens their second set with their twist on the suicidal-somber ‘Exit Music (For a Film),’ a Radiohead track from the closing credits of (appropriately enough) Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet.’ So, you see, the Trio isn’t your grandfather’s jazz combo. Currently a pre-med student enrolled at USC, Wrubel remains content to practice his creative outlet on the side. This is not a bad jazz city,’ Wrubel says of L.A.’s small but loyal jazz community. ‘Los Angeles has a good variety of clubs and musicians.’ Along the Jazz Bakery’s wall, mammoth oils of Armstrong, Holiday, and Miller smile out of the darkness. If casual jazz guy James Wrubel doesn’t watch his back, his portrait may one day join them.

Palisadian Julie Firstenberg Kamins has just released her first children’s book, ‘Why Am I at the Red Table?’ the newest children’s book dedicated to kids with a desire to learn and to those who have faced challenges in learning and reading. On Saturday, January 26 at noon she will appear at Village Books on Swarthmore to sign books and answer questions. The book follows the story of Madison, a second grader who has just started school and has been assigned to the ‘red table’ reading group. Aware of the labeling, she is quickly discouraged and stops reading. Eventually, Madison learns an important lesson. ‘Education is really about focusing on your own learning, and not really paying attention to or comparing yourself to others, but trying to work on your own personal best,’ Kamins said. ‘The message isn’t that you will definitely move up, but if you don’t try at all, you definitely won’t.’ Kamins, an academic tutor, drew inspiration from her students to write this book about educational challenges. ‘It’s designed for children to give them the experience of someone else who might be feeling similar and to show them, not to worry about anyone else,’ Kamins said. ‘When you get to be our age, no one asks what reading group you were in. We don’t really judge people that way; it’s more about a work ethic that develops in life.’ One of Kamins students was in a situation similar to Madison’s. A lack of confidence discouraged her from reading, so Kamins read her an early rough draft of ‘Why Am I at the Red Table?’ Following her tutoring session that night, she surprised her family by reading aloud at the dinner table. Shortly after she entered a read-a-thon, in which she read 120 books. Kamins attended Westlake (now Harvard-Westlake) School, where she began tutoring during her freshman year. She went on to receive degrees in English and sociology from UC Berkeley, where she continued to tutor. Following her undergraduate studies she received her law degree from Southwestern. Although she had no children while attending law school, the school allowed her to enroll in the single mothers program (classes were offered during the school day so that mothers could be home when their children were finished with school) so that she could continue to tutor. ‘Tutoring has always been a part of me, since I was 14,’ Kamins said. Kamins now tutors seven days a week from her home on Asilomar. Her husband Philip is a local dentist and the couple has two children, Joshua, 6 and Alana, 2. Joshua is credited, along with many other children, as ‘junior editors’ who helped Kamins complete her book. ‘People think the book is just about learning disabilities, but it’s not,’ Kamins said. ‘It’s an overall message about learning.’

Chamber Music Palisades continues its music series at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, January 29 at St. Matthew’s church, 1031 Bienveneda. The concert will showcase musicians Ida Levin, violin, Michael Grego, clarinet, Susan Greenberg, flute and Delores Stevens, piano and will feature Bartok’s 1938 groundbreaking jazz/classical crossover hit ‘Contrasts’ for violin, clarinet and piano, made famous by Benny Goodman. The program will also include chamber works by Rameau, Prokofiev and Brahms. KUSC’s Alan Chapman will host. Bartok’s pioneering work ‘Contrasts’ for violin, clarinet and piano has captivated the jazz and classical music world since its 1938 debut. Written on commission by Hungarian violinist Josef Szigeti and the ‘King of Swing,’ clarinetist Benny Goodman, it contrasts the colors of the three different instruments, as well as jazz and classical music styles and their moods and tempi. Alhtough Bartok was initially skeptical of writing for a jazz artist, a meeting on the French Riviera with Goodman, who was touring Europe at the time, changed his mind. He completed the work in just over a month, initially creating a piece in two movements to which he subsequently added a middle movement. Performing the work will be Santa Monica native Ida Levin, who made her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at age 10, and has performed around the world and at the White House; Michael Grego, clarinet with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra who frequently performs with LA Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Joffrey Ballet Orchestra; and pianist and Chamber Music Palisades co-founder Delores Stevens. Other works on the program include ‘Pieces de Clavecin’ by French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, featuring Grego on clarinet and Stevens on harpsichord; Sonata for flute and piano by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev featuring Stevens and flutist Susan Greenberg, Chamber Music Palisades co-founder, and a member of LACO since 1975; and Sonata in G Major for violin and piano by German composer Johannes Brahms, performed by Levin and Stevens. Tickets are $25; students with ID are free. For tickets and information call: (310) 459-2070 or visit: www.cmpalisades.org.